NOTES
NOTES
Life of Antony by Athanasius
INTRODUCTION
1. There has been much debate over whether Athanasius really did write this work. See K. Heussi, Der Ursprung des Mönchtums (Tübingen 1936), chapter 3. It was certainly attributed to Athanasius by Gregory in his Oration on Athanasius (20.5), probably composed in 380, and by Jerome in his work On Famous Men, written in 392.
2. R. C. Gregg and D. E. Groh, Early Arianism – a View of Salvation (London 1981), p. 133.
3. D. Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford 1995), p. 264.
4. See the remarks of R. C. Gregg in the introduction to his translation of Athanasius’ Life of Antony (New York 1980), pp. 11–13.
5. J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. C. Misrahi (2nd edition, New York 1974), p. 125.
6. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 20.5; Palladius, Lausiac History, 8; John Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew, 8; Jerome, On Famous Men, 88; Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, 1.8; Augustine, Confessions, 8.6.15.
7. Eusebius had been sent into exile in 355 for his refusal to condemn Athanasius at the Synod of Milan.
8. See Life of Martin, VI.4.
9. It is possible that it was Evagrius who suggested that Jerome, after his unhappy time in the Syrian desert, might go to Rome and work as Pope Damasus’ secretary. Since it was Damasus who in 382 asked Jerome to revise the Latin text of the Bible, it may be that we are ultimately indebted to Evagrius for the Vulgate.
10. Jerome, Letter 1.15, the earliest of Jerome’s surviving compositions.
11. Cf. Jerome, Life of Malchus, 2.
12. Jerome, Letter 7.1.
13. This is not to be confused with the Melitian schism, referred to by Athanasius in the Life of Antony, which occurred earlier in the fourth century and centred on Egypt.
14. Jerome, On Famous Men, 125.
15. Many, including J. N. D. Kelly Golden Mouth (London 1995), take it that Evagrius died in 393.
16. Basil, Letter 156 is addressed to Evagrius after Evagrius had visited Basil at Caesarea on his way back from the west to Antioch.
17. Jerome, Letter 1.15.
LIFE OF ANTONY
1. Egypt.
2. The mss are divided between the two readings ‘feci’ and ‘fecit’. I have chosen to accept the reading ‘fecit’, given in PL 73, as it seems to make more sense here. The reading ‘feci’ implies that Athanasius spent a long period with Antony but also makes Athanasius his own primary source; furthermore it does not provide a sufficiently strong contrast with the previous phrase, ‘those things I myself know’.
3. Cf. Genesis 25:27.
4. Luke 5:11.
5. Acts of the Apostles 4:34–5.
6. Cf. Colossians 1:5.
7. Matthew 19:21–2. This quotation follows the usage of Athanasius and Evagrius. The same verse in the General Introduction follows the modern Bible text.
8. An aroura here is an Egyptian measure of land: it has been calculated that Antony was the owner of about 200 acres of fertile land.
9. Matthew 6:34.
10. 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
11. 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
12. Cf. Ephesians 6:12.
13. 1 Corinthians 15:10.
14. Mark 9:18; Acts of the Apostles 7:54.
15. Cf. Hosea 4:12.
16. Psalm 118:7.
17. Romans 8:4.
18. 1 Peter 5:8.
19. Ephesians 6:11.
20. Cf. 1 Corinthians 9:27.
21. 2 Corinthians 12:10.
22. St Paul in Philippians 3:13.
23. 1 Kings 18:15.
24. Romans 8:35.
25. Psalm 27:3.
26. The devil.
27. Psalm 68:1–2.
28. Psalm 118:10.
29. Cf. Colossians 4:6.
30. Cf. Romans 8:32.
31. In Athanasius’ Greek version, it is specifically noted here that Antony spoke in the Egyptian, i.e., Coptic, language.
32. Psalm 90:10.
33. Romans 8:18.
34. This appears to be a paraphrase from Ecclesiastes rather than a specific quotation.
35. Cf. John 14:2–3. Athanasius, unlike Evagrius, makes no explicit allusion to a biblical passage at this point.
36. Cf. Luke 12:35–47.
37. Ezechiel 18:30, 33:20.
38. Romans 8:28.
39. 1 Corinthians 15:31.
40. Genesis 19:26.
41. Luke 9:62.
42. Luke 17:21.
43. Joshua 24:23.
44. These are the words of John the Baptist, as recorded in Matthew 3:3, Luke 3:4 and John 1:23, echoing Isaiah 40:3.
45. James 1:20.
46. James 1:15.
47. Cf. Proverbs 4:23.
48. Ephesians 6:12.
49. Cf. Cassian, Conferences, 7.17, 17.20, 17.32; Augustine, The City of God, 8:22.
50. Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:10.
51. 2 Corinthians 2:11.
52. Job 41:9–11 (41:18–21 in the Jerusalem Bible).
53. Cf. Job 41:27.
54. Exodus 15:9.
55. Isaiah 10:14.
56. Cf. Job 40:24.
57. Cf. Luke 10:19.
58. Habakkuk 2:15.
59. Cf. Luke 4:41.
60. Psalm 50:16.
61. Psalm 39:1–2 and Psalm 38:13–14.
62. John 8:44.
63. Ecclesiasticus 1:32 (some manuscripts).
64. 2 Kings 19:35.
65. Matthew 8:31.
66. Luke 10:19.
67. Cf. John 15:14–15.
68. Cf. Isaiah 42:2.
69. Luke 1:13.
70. Luke 2:10–11.
71. Matthew 28:5.
72. John 8:56.
73. The phrase in parentheses is Evagrius’ paraphrase of the Greek term Theotokos applied to the Virgin Mary as the mother of God.
74. Luke 1:41.
75. Matthew 4:10; Deuteronomy 6:13.
76. Luke 10:20.
77. Matthew 7:22–3.
78. Cf. Psalm 1:6.
79. 1 John 4:1.
80. Psalm 20:7.
81. Romans 8:35.
82. Luke 10:18.
83. Cf. 1 Corinthians 4:6.
84. Psalm 9:6.
85. John 14:20.
86. Cf. Joshua 5:13.
87. Daniel and Susanna (chapter 13 of the Greek version of Daniel) 51–9.
88. Numbers 24:5–6.
89. Cf. John 14:2 and 14:23.
90. 2 Corinthians 12:2.
91. Matthew 6:31–3.
92. ‘Maximin’ is the reading given in PG 26 as opposed to ‘Maximian’ given in PL 73. It is likely that Antony’s visit to Alexandria referred to here took place in 311 during the persecutions of Maximin Daia, who caused many Christians to be mutilated and sent from Egypt to the mines of Palestine and Cilicia, as well as to the porphyry quarries near the Red Sea.
93. Peter of Alexandria was beheaded in 311.
94. Matthew 7:7.
95. The Bucolia (pastures) seems to refer to a marshy district in the region of the Nile Delta close to Alexandria, inhabited by a wild tribe who kept sheep there (Cf. Life of Hilarion, 43), but this area is in the Lower Thebaid, not the Upper Thebaid which is where Antony says he intends to go.
96. This was the so-called Inner Mountain or Mount Colzim, about 160 kilometres south-east of present day Cairo, to which Antony withdrew after spending twenty years at the Outer Mountain beside the Nile.
97. Ephesians 6:12.
98. Psalm 125:1.
99. Cf. Job 5:23.
100. The author is referring to David and specifically to Psalm 37:12: The wicked plots against the righteous, and gnashes his teeth at him.
101. The Greek text is more specific, giving ‘hyenas’.
102. Proverbs 24:15b.
103. Ephesians 4:26.
104. 2 Corinthians 13:5.
105. The teacher is again St Paul: 1 Corinthians 4:5.
106. Romans 2:16.
107. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25.
108. Galatians 6:2.
109. Cf. note 92.
110. The historian Socrates (Ecclesiastical History, III.23) alludes to this, as well as mentioning the miracle of Ammon’s crossing of the river.
111. Ammon, the founder of the semi-eremitic settlement at Nitria in Egypt, died in about 350. Cf. The Lives of the Desert Fathers, 22 and Palladius’ Lausiac History for near contemporary accounts of Ammon; also D. Chitty, The Desert a City (Oxford 1966) passim.
112. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, 1.14, calls it a canal.
113. Matthew 14:29.
114. Ephesians 6:12.
115. Ephesians 6:11.
116. Titus 2:8.
117. 2 Corinthians 12:2.
118. Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:4.
119. John 6:45, echoing Isaiah 54:13.
120. Cf. Philippians 3:13.
121. Proverbs 15:13.
122. Genesis 31:5.
123. Cf. 1 Samuel 16:12.
124. In the Greek text, these schismatics are specified as Meletians or Melitians, followers of Melitius of Lycopolis who organized a break-away church in Egypt and Palestine in the early years of the fourth century. See also Life of Antony, 89.
125. This is a term used by Athanasius for his Arian opponents.
126. This visit to Alexandria to denounce the Arians probably took place in 337 or 338.
127. 2 Corinthians 6:14.
128. Romans 1:25.
129. Romans 8:22.
130. Cf. Romans 11:36.
131. This is the only passage in this work where the author implies that he was himself present at the incident he is relating.
132. Cf. Colossians 4:6.
133. Reading superatam (the reading in PG 26) for separatam (PL 73).
134. Libera is more commonly known as Proserpina or Persephone.
135. The teacher is Paul and the passage Athanasius alludes to is probably 1 Corinthians 2:5.
136. Constantine was Caesar and Emperor from 306 to 337; Constantius was Constantine’s second son: he was Emperor from his father’s death until his own death in 361; Constans was Constantine’s youngest son who became Emperor of the west from 337 until he was murdered in 350. Cf. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. B. Ward, p. 8, where Antony is said to have received a letter from the emperor Constantius asking him to go to Constantinople. Antony asks his disciple Paul whether he ought to go, to which Paul replies, ‘If you go, you will be called Antony, but if you stay here, you will be called Abba Antony.’
137. Cf. Daniel 4:19 (4:16 in the Vulgate).
138. Serapion, bishop of Thmuis in the Nile Delta from 339.
139. Matthew 17:20.
140. John 16:23–4.
141. Matthew 10:8.
142. Cf. Gregory’s Life of Benedict (XXX.4), in which a distinction is made between miracles accomplished by prayer and those brought about through power granted to Benedict by God.
143. Matthew 7:2.
144. Matthew 27:60.
145. Cf. Joshua 23:14, 1 Kings 2:2.
146. Luke 16:9.
147. Antony insists that his body should not be mummified in accordance with non-Christian Egyptian tradition.
148. Jerome in his Life of Paul (12) says that Paul asked Antony to bury him in the cloak Athanasius had given him. Hilarion wears a tunic given to him by Antony (Life of Hilarion, 4). For a similar gift of a cloak of camel’s hair, the regular clothing of fourth-century monks, see Paulinus of Nola, Letter 29.1, in which he thanks his friend Sulpicius Severus for his gift.
149. Athanasius himself.
150. According to Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, I.35, Antony died at the age of 105 in the nineteenth year of the reign of Constantius II, i.e., in 356.
Life of Paul of Thebes by Jerome
INTRODUCTION
1. An earlier date has also been suggested, based on the view that it was written while Jerome was still in the desert. See J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome, His Life, Writings and Controversies, pp. 60–61.
2. This means that the meeting between Antony and Paul, and Paul’s death, occurred in 341.
3. This is apparently the same cloak which Antony is said to have bequeathed back to Athanasius when he died some fifteen years later! It may be Jerome’s witty means of insisting on Paul’s priority over Antony.
4. Jerome, Letter 10.
LIFE OF PAUL OF THEBES
1. Palladius (Lausiac History, 21.1) also mentions these disciples by name, perhaps using Jerome as his source. Athanasius had not given their names in his Life of Antony.
2. Jerome is presumably referring to Athanasius’ Greek version and Evagrius’ Latin translation.
3. Cyprian, Letter 33.
4. Tertullian in his Apologeticum refers to an unnamed Greek prostitute who bit off her tongue and spat it in the tyrant’s face rather than be forced to reveal certain secrets.
5. Virgil, Aeneid, 3:57.
6. This sentence is an echo of Lucius Florus, Epitome of Livy, I.40.7.
7. Cf. Mark 9:23.
8. Cf. Psalm 19:4 and Romans 10:18.
9. 1 John 4:18.
10. Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9.
11. Virgil, Aeneid, 2:650.
12. Virgil, Aeneid, 6:672.
13. 1 Corinthians 13:7.
14. Elijah was also fed by ravens at God’s command: 1 Kings 17:4–6.
15. Cf. Philippians 1:23.
16. Cf. 2 Timothy 4:7–8.
17. Cf. 1 Corinthians 13:5.
18. Ecclesiastes 3:7.
Life of Hilarion by Jerome
INTRODUCTION
1. Epiphanius himself founded a monastery at Eleutheropolis in Palestine.
2. A chapel was apparently also built on the site of his mountain retreat on Cyprus, near the coast north of Nicosia; later the Crusaders built a castle there, named after Hilarion.
3. By C. Mohrmann, in her introduction to an edition of the Life of Hilarion (A. Bastiaensen (ed.), Milan 1975), p. xxxi.
4. Life of Hilarion, 4.
LIFE OF HILARION
1. Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline, 8.
2. Daniel 8:3; 7:6; 8:5, 21.
3. Arrian, Anabasis, I.12.1; Plutarch, Alexander, 15.4; Cicero, On behalf of Archias, 10.24.
4. See D. Chitty, The Desert a City, for later monastic settlements, down to the sixth century, at Thabatha. Hilarion was born there in the last decade of the third century.
5. Cf. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (trans. B. Ward), p. 111, where Antony and Hilarion are reported to have greeted each other thus: ‘You are welcome, torch which awakens the day,’ says Antony, to which Hilarion replies, ‘Peace to you, pillar of light, giving light to the world.’
6. Acts of the Apostles 5:1–11.
7. Luke 14:33.
8. Majuma was later accorded the status of a separate city by Constantine, who renamed it Constantia, favouring it over Gaza because Majuma’s population was predominantly Christian, unlike that of Gaza (Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, V.3).
9. Isaiah 14:14.
10. 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
11. Exodus 15:1.
12. Psalm 20:7.
13. Luke 5:31.
14. Marnas was a pagan divinity, worshipped chiefly at Gaza, Cf. Life of Hilarion, 20.
15. Rhinocorura was a maritime city on the borders of Egypt and Palestine, apparently originally founded as a penal colony; now known as El Arish.
16. Cf. Mark 8:23.
17. 2 Kings 5.2 off.
18. Acts of the Apostles 8:18ff.
19. Consus seems to have been an old Roman God whose festival, a type of harvest festival, was traditionally celebrated with horse races. Cf. Cicero, On the Republic, II.7.12; Ovid, Fasti, 3.199ff.; Tertullian, On the Shows, 5.
20. Gaza seems to have continued as a predominantly pagan city until at least the end of the fourth century. See Ramsay Macmullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire. (New Haven, Connecticut 1981), p. 134.
21. Memphis was the centre of the Egyptian cult of Aesculapius, the god of medicine.
22. Matthew 8:28–33, Mark 5:1–16.
23. This implies that he was a pagan priest.
24. A city of Lower Egypt situated on the east bank of the Nile near the Mediterranean.
25. Cf. Life of Antony, 50.
26. Cf. Life of Antony, 91.
27. The Oasis was a strip of habitable land surrounded by desert. Here Jerome is presumably referring to the so-called Great Oasis which lay west of the Nile. It had been a place of banishment for political offenders and later of refuge for Christian fugitives. Gradually it filled with monasteries and churches. Cf. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, II.28. A nineteenth century visitor to the Great Oasis (G. A. Hoskings, A Visit to the Great Oasis (London 1837)), described it thus:
Let the reader imagine a long and broad valley bounded nearly on every side by low, and I might say, horizontal ranges of mountains, and the whole surface of this enclosed space one immense down of light moving sand. In this fearful valley is a narrow broken chain, a verdant thread of little groves of date trees… appearing like little islands in this sea of barrenness.
28. The pagan Julian was emperor from 361 until he was killed in 363 when he was succeeded by Jovian.
29. Matthew 5:14.
30. In about 320 the emperor Constantine began to build a church on the site of the apostle Peter’s martyrdom and/or burial. It seems to have been finished by 329 and parts of it survived until the seventeenth century.
31. Matthew 10:8.
32. This seems to be the modern Dubrovnik; as Epidaurus it is mentioned by Procopius, The Gothic War V.7.28,32.
33. ‘Boa’ is connected with the Greek word bous.
34. Matthew 21:21.
35. Matthew 14:31.
36. These three cities were in the east, south and north of Cyprus; together with Paphos in the west, they here represent the whole island.
37. For this area of Egypt known as ‘the pastures’ cf. Life of Antony, 49 (n.95).
38. This may be the place referred to by Sozomen (Ecclesiastical History, V.10) as Charburis.
39. Embalmed.
Life of Malchus by Jerome
INTRODUCTION
1. See J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome, His Life, Writings and Controversies, pp. 182–9.
2. Cf. Jerome’s Letter 22, addressed to the young girl Eustochium in 384 but destined to become one of Jerome’s best-known works, in which the ideal of chastity is hammered home with more force and less charm.
1. Evagrius of Antioch was a close friend of Jerome and the translator of Athanasius’ Life of Antony.
2. Luke 1:5–6.
3. Nisibis was a town in northern Mesopotamia. It is now Nusaybin in south-east Turkey.
4. Beroea was a town in Syria between Antioch and Hierapolis. It is now Aleppo.
5. Proverbs 26:11, Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly; cf. 2 Peter 2:22.
6. Cf. Luke 9:62.
7. A city in northern Mesopotamia.
8. Ephesians 6:5–8.
9. Cf. the decision of Ammon and his wife on their wedding night not to consummate their marriage. They lived together for eighteen years, but sleeping in separate beds, before his wife persuaded him to leave her so that he could devote himself to the ascetic life more perfectly. See Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, I.14.
10. Proverbs 6:6.
11. The manuscripts are divided between the readings ‘matutina’ and ‘mature’, neither wholly satisfactory: I have chosen the latter.
12. Some texts give the reading Sabianus. The name Sabinianus occurs in the extant records in the form of a man who was ‘magister equitum’ in the east in 359–60, but this man’s career seems to be too late to be that of the man whom Malchus encountered as a young man. However, Reginald of Canterbury, in the twelfth century, wrote a verse life of Malchus, an expanded version of Jerome’s biography, in which he uses the reading Sabinianus, which inclines me to consider this reading preferable.
Life of Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus
INTRODUCTION
1. For the events surrounding Martin’s death, see Sulpicius Severus, Letters 2 and 3.
2. See, for example, the introduction to Adomnan, Life of St Columba (trans. R. Sharpe, Harmondsworth 1995), pp. 57–9.
3. Sulpicius Severus, Dialogues, I.23.
4. Life of Martin, XIX.3.
5. Life of Martin, XXV.
6. C. Stancliffe, St Martin and his Hagiographer, pp. 15–16.
7. It is not only the preface, but also the portrayal of Martin which contains echoes of classical literature, for the structure of the Life of Martin has much in common with Suetonius’ Life of the Caesars.
8. Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (chapter 27), contrasted Sulpicius’ literary style, which he commended as ‘not unworthy of the Augustan age’, with much of the content of the work, which he referred to as ‘facts adapted to the grossest barbarism’.
LIFE OF MARTIN
1. Cf. Horace, Epistles, I.18.71, ‘the word once let slip flies beyond recall,’ and Ars Poetica, 389–90, ‘you can delete what you have not published, but once the voice has been sent forth it cannot return.’
2. This preface bears similarities to that of Sallust at the beginning of his work on the conspiracy of Catiline.
3. Probably Szombathely in Hungary, about 100 kilometres south-east of Vienna, close to the border with Austria.
4. Constantius was Roman emperor in the east from 337 to 361; in 355 he made Julian Caesar in Gaul. Julian succeeded Constantius as emperor from 361 to 363.
5. A catechumen was a Christian convert who was being instructed in the faith prior to baptism.
6. Cf. Matthew 6:34.
7. Matthew 25:40.
8. Julian was sent to the Rhine frontier to repel barbarian raids after he had been nominated Caesar in 355. For a contemporary account of these campaigns, see Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire, 16.2–3. The incident at Worms, when Martin came up against the pagan authorities, probably took place in 356, the year of Antony’s death in Egypt.
9. This was the city later known as Worms.
10. Hilary, one of the great Latin theologians, famous for his work On the Trinity, was born in Poitiers in about 315 and died there in about 367.
11. One of the minor orders of the church, below the diaconate.
12. i.e. Martin returned to Sabaria.
13. Psalms 118:6; cf. Life of Antony, 6, where Antony also answers the devil with a verse of this same psalm (118:7).
14. Hilary was sent into exile in Asia Minor in 356 for refusing to condemn Athanasius.
15. Auxentius was the Arian bishop of Milan from 355 to 374, when he was succeeded by Ambrose.
16. Gallinara is a tiny island opposite Albenga, 80 kilometres south-west of Genoa on the Italian coast.
17. Constantius sent Hilary back to Gaul in 360.
18. This was at Ligugé, outside Poitiers.
19. Psalm 8:2. The reading ‘defensor’ (defender) which plays on the name of Martin’s principal opponent and is crucial to the point of this episode, is not found in the Latin Vulgate version, but only in the version of the Psalms known as the Psalterium Romanum.
20. Augustine also continued to live in a monastic community even after becoming bishop of Hippo: see Possidius, Life of Augustine, 5.4.
21. At Marmoutier outside Tours.
22. Cf. Acts of the Apostles 4:32, 4:35.
23. Martin visited Trier in the period 385–7 in connection with the Priscillianist controversy.
24. Paulinus of Nola, renowned for his renunciation of his great wealth and a close friend of Martin’s biographer. Cf. Life of Martin, 25.4.
25. Magnus Maximus Maxentius, Roman emperor in the west, 383–8. This banquet was probably held at Trier at some point during the years 385–7.
26. As a result of Maximus’ usurpation, Valentinian II was deprived of his imperial sovereignty in Gaul, while Gratian was murdered, allegedly at Maximus’ orders.
27. Cf. Orosius, History against the Pagans, 7.34.
28. Clarus is mentioned by Paulinus of Nola in Letter 23.3.
29. Sulpicius may here be alluding to Jerome’s preface to the Life of Hilarion, where Jerome mentions Homer in similar terms.
Life of Benedict by Gregory the Great
INTRODUCTION
1. While the first three books recount the miracles of various saints (the account of Benedict’s miracles being by far the longest), the fourth book of the Dialogues deals with death, heaven and hell.
2. Paulinus of Nola, the friend of Sulpicius Severus, is included among these saints: although he came from Gaul he spent most of his life in Italy at the shrine of St Felix of Nola in Campania.
3. Gregory wrote the Moralia, which uses the text of the book of Job as a starting point for spiritual and theological discussions, homilies on Ezechiel and the Gospel, as well as the Pastoral Rule.
4. The earliest example of this apologetic use of the genre is probably the Octavius of Minucius Felix, dating from the early third century.
LIFE OF BENEDICT
1. In the Latin there is a pun here on the name Benedict which means blessed.
2. Nursia, now Norcia, lies some 100 kilometres north-east of Rome. Benedict was born there in about 480.
3. i.e. at Subiaco.
4. Cf. Matthew 5:15.
5. Numbers 8:24–5.
6. This was the monastery of Vicovaro.
7. Luke 15:11–17.
8. Acts of the Apostles 12:11.
9. St Paul.
10. Philippians 1:21, 1:23.
11. Acts of the Apostles 9:24–5; 2 Corinthians 11:32–3.
12. Gregory interprets this episode in a similar way in his Moralia in Job 31:58.
13. It is from this disciple of Benedict that the Maurists, the members of the French Benedictine congregation founded in 1621 and known for its scholarship, took their name.
14. Cf. Life of Antony, 6.
15. humble; Cf. Matthew 5:3.
16. Cf. Matthew 11:30.
17. Exodus 17:1–7; Numbers 20:2–13.
18. 2 Kings 6:4–7.
19. Matthew 14:28–9.
20. 1 Kings 17:6.
21. 2 Samuel 1:11–12, 18:33.
22. John 1:9.
23. John 1:16.
24. Matthew 12:39–40.
25. At Monte Cassino.
26. Cf. Paulus Diaconus, History of the Lombards, 1.26. In Benedict’s day St Martin was widely venerated in Italy.
27. The devil calls Benedict ‘Maledictus’ (cursed), playing on the meaning of his name (blessed).
28. Prologue, 2.
29. Cf. 2 Kings 5:25–6 where Elisha reveals that he knows of Gehazi’s conversation with Naaman.
30. The meeting between Totila and Benedict seems to have taken place in 546.
31. Totila died in 552.
32. In south-east Italy. The bishop’s name was Sabinus.
33. In 546.
34. Cf. Prologue, 2.
35. Aquinum lay about ten kilometres west of Monte Cassino.
36. Until the man died.
37. 1 Corinthians 6:17.
38. St Paul at Romans 11:34.
39. 1 Corinthians 2:11.
40. 1 Corinthians 2:12.
41. 1 Corinthians 2:9–10.
42. Romans 11:33; Peter quotes Romans 11:34 in section XVI.4.
43. Psalm 119:13.
44. The destruction by the Lombards probably occurred in 577. The monks fled and the buildings remained ruinous for the next 140 years.
45. Acts of the Apostles 27:22–4.
46. Probably in 537–8.
47. John 3:8.
48. 2 Samuel 7:1–17.
49. 2 Kings 4:27.
50. Terracino lay some fifty kilometres south-west of Monte Cassino.
51. Habakkuk.
52. Bel and the Dragon (chapter 14 of the Greek version of Daniel), 33–9.
53. Matthew 16:19.
54. In the Incarnation.
55. According to the Rule of Benedict (67.7) monks were not allowed to leave the monastery without their abbot’s permission.
56. Cf. Matthew 6:19–20.
57. John 1:12.
58. Acts of the Apostles 9:40.
59. Acts of the Apostles 5:1–10.
60. Cf. Life of Antony, 84, on the performing of miracles.
61. The word ‘benedictio’, usually meaning a blessing, here bears one of its rarer meanings, being used of a free meal which is blessed and given to visitors.
62. Cf. Elisha and the Shunammite’s son: 2 Kings 4:34–5.
63. This was because women, even close relatives, were not allowed to enter the monastery.
64. 1 John 4:16.
65. Cf. Luke 7:47.
66. This recalls the account of Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:23: in their death they were not divided.
67. Liberius’ illustrious career spanned the years 484–554 approximately. He is mentioned by, amongst others, Cassiodorus, Ennodius and Procopius.
68. Cf. Life of Benedict, 17.1.
69. John 16:7.